A Swedish Love Story (En kärlekshistoria) first published by EyeforFilm In 1970, Erich Segal’s novel Love Story was the top-selling work of fiction in the US, while in the same year Arthur Hiller’s film adaptation (with a screenplay by Segal) was the number one box office attraction. So when En Kärlekshistoria (literally ‘A Love Story’)…
Psychobitch first publsihed by EyeForFilm at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2019 There is a scene near the beginning of Psychobitch when we see Marius (Jonas Tildemann) – one year away from entering high school, but praised by father and teachers for his “adult” maturity – casually weeing over some pooh that has got stuck…
To the accompaniment of fey flutework from composer Katisse Buckingham, the opening credits of writer/director Jud Cremata’s feature debut Let’s Scare Julie offer elegant animated design in the style of Saul Bass. Here the name of each cast member appears, only to be erased by a red bar, until it becomes clear that these bars…
“This story isn’t about truth, or love – this story is about sin.” says Aubrey Miller (Brenna Llewellyn) in voiceover near the beginning of The Sinners (aka The Color Rose). The film opens in medias res: Aubrey is on her knees praying when a car pulls up behind her, and six young women in masks…
Sleepaway Camp (aka Nightmare Vacation) first published (in a slightly different verion) by Movie Gazette After a father and one of his young children are killed in a freak boating accident, the surviving child is sent to live with kooky Aunt Martha (Desiree Gould). Cut to eight years later, and Angela (Felissa Rose) is growing…
Mon Mon Mon Monsters (Guai guai guai guaiwu!) first published by VODzilla.co As if the title were not signifier enough, Mon Mon Mon Monsters (Guai guai guai guaiwu!) announces itself as a creature feature right from its opening scene where a hobo, wandering into the basement of an old building for shelter, is attacked by…
Blue Spring (Aoi haru) first published by Little White Lies, as the 80th entry in my Cinema Psychotronicum column In the opening sequence of Blue Spring (Aoi haru), with a Graduation Ceremony audible in the background, teenagers Kujo (Ryuhei Matsuda) and Aoki (Hirofumi Arai) pick a lock to the roof area of the single-sex Asashi…
Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark first published by Sight & Sound, October 2019 Review: The frightening tales promised in the title of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark are told and retold, reconstituted, rewritten (in blood) and recycled. It has been adapted from some of the creepy contes (Harold, The Big Toe,…
Level 16 first published by SciFiNow Prepubescent Vivien (Sarah DaSilva) and Sophia (Lori Phun) reside on Level 10 of an authoritarian boarding school for girls, and dream of being chosen for adoption by a good family and seeing the sky for their first time. While helping Sophia pick up the jar of facial cream that she has dropped, Vivien commits…
Blue My Mind first published by SciFiNow It opens with a little red-haired girl on a rocky beach looking out to sea. Later we see that same girl Mia (Luna Wedler), now a teenager, in the new apartment (still visibly under construction) where she has just moved with her parents. And we see her frequently on…
Carrie fist published by Little White Lies, as entry 48 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column “Red. I might have known it would be red.” So says Margaret White – note the colour-coded surname – a sexually repressed religious zealot (played by Piper Laurie) under whose rigidly controlling single parentage teenaged Carrie (Sissy Spacek) has been brought…